Alexis Tsipras assumes "political responsibility for the tragedy"

The controversy swelled Friday 27 July in Greece after the fires that ravaged Monday the region of Athens, whose balance sheet has increased to 87 dead. The government has tried to clear customs by designating a criminal track and calling into question decades of anarchic urbanism.

Invisible for three days, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras finally convened a Council of Ministers at the end of afternoon, Friday. On his release, he notably declared that he badumed "the political responsibility for the tragedy" . "I think that goes without saying to the Prime Minister and the government of the country" he added, in an intervention broadcast on television.

"We will not try to 'escape our responsibilities' he stressed. He explained that "tragedies were often used to reveal problems that are not normally present in public discourse" .

Recalling that many localities in Greece "were built illegally on courtyards. on water or on coasts " he pointed out that " today we are painfully aware that we are ruling a country dominated by irregularities ".

Thursday evening , the government had tried a first official explanation, indicating having seized the justice of a "serious element" being able to indicate a criminal origin of the disaster.

provisional balance of 87 dead

In statements to the media, the head of the Athens forensic service, Nikos Karakoukis, has revised upwards, to 86 deaths, the number of victims, against 82 officially recorded until then. In addition, a serious wounded man died in hospital.

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                After the fires in Greece, the difficult process of identification
    

On the ground in Mati, the area most affected by fires, where 49% of houses were declared uninhabitable, rescuers who continue to rake the rubble in the middle of charred pines did not exclude new macabre discoveries. "It's a long-term job, you have to wait for the ashes to fall and sometimes go back four or five times to the same place before finding anything" reported the rescuer Stavroula Stergiadou.

identification of victims must also last a few more days, "from 75 to 80% of bodies being charred" said Grigoris Leon, president of the Greek Society of Forensic Medicine.

Rebuild otherwise

Before the speech of Alexis Tsipras, Friday afternoon, the government has tried to regain control as critics rise on the management of this crisis, the opposition out of his reserve, after three days of

Successive on the spot, government officials questioned the decades of violation of the rules of construction and planning, leading to the construction in the area of ​​some 4 000 poorly served houses among pines.

"The whole area must be redrawn (…) we must open roads, reopen access to the sea" pleaded the Minister of the Interior, Panos Skourletis, noting that the authorities must "enter into conflict with organized interests" . "All Greece is built on this model" he insisted. These mea culpa are recurrent in the country after each disaster, without hitherto a real stunt put to the indiscipline citizen and to the official complaisance which it profits.

The blazing fire, which devastated the area in "barely an hour and a half" deprived the authorities of any margin to act in time and evacuate the inhabitants, had also argued the Government spokesperson, Dimitris Tzanakopoulos

"Dangerous Government"

The main opposition party, New Democracy (right), denounced a "comedy of rejection of all responsibility" considering that many questions remained unanswered, including the number of firefighters hired and the absence of an "immediate order of evacuation" .

"This government is dangerous and must leave" reacted one of the leaders of the centrist opposition, Fofi Gennimatas. Another, Stavros Theodorakis, is indignant that not a single official has resigned.

Many victims died trying to reach the sea, sometimes barred by cliffs, by streets ] "Broad of barely 3 or 4 meters" specified the mayor. "We are all responsible, government, services and citizens" he added, stating that his own family home, which burned, was built illegally.

"The question now is to know what can be done " to avoid a new tragedy, emphasized the editorial of the liberal daily Kathimerini .